Your boss can influence your health!
Strong and effective leadership are vital for any workplace. Managers play a huge role in creating the best work environment, polishing the behaviour of employees, and also promoting their health and wellness. However, a new study suggests that managers must be provided with incentives to focus on creating a healthier work environment. Increase in employee wellness and motivation can be achieved by tying 10 per cent of managerial salary increases to health initiatives, the findings, published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, suggested. “Instead of focusing on individual wellness outcomes, we propose that it would be more effective if managers were incentivised to create healthier overall work environments with simple, easy to implement actions such as installing a water cooler, providing healthy snacks at meetings, and encouraging work/life balance,” said lead author Rebecca Robbins from Cornell University in New York, US.
Depression linked to Neanderthal DNA
Depression and unhealthy habits are difficult to deal with. A new study suggests that being hooked on these behaviours could be attributed to the DNA one inherited from the Neanderthal heritage. Neanderthals lived in Europe and Asia 200,000 years ago, before the modern people arrived. The modern people split off on the evolutionary tree thousands of years ago. However, the ancestors of modern people interbred with Neanderthals about 50,000 years ago after leaving Africa. Researchers believed that the modern people were able to retain this Neanderthal DNA because it is helpful in surviving new environments. Asian and European ancestry has around 2 percent of DNA from Neanderthals.
will we grow shark-like teeth one dayIJ
Sharks can regenerate their teeth through the network of genes, which may pave the way for the development of therapies to help humans with tooth loss, said researchers. Although humans possess same cells, their tooth regeneration ability is limited. But the study has identified a network of genes that enables sharks to develop and regenerate their teeth. “We know that sharks are fearsome predators and one of the main reasons they are so successful at hunting prey is because of their rows of backward pointing, razor-sharp teeth that regenerate rapidly throughout their lifetime, and so are replaced before decay,” said the lead author Gareth Fraser from the University of Sheffield in Britain. Researchers have identified how a special set of epithelial cells form, the dental lamina, which are responsible for the lifelong continuation of tooth development and regeneration in sharks.